Patterns of modern pollen and plant richness across northern Europe

1. Sedimentary pollen offers excellent opportunities to reconstruct vegetation changes over past millennia. Number of different pollen taxa or pollen richness is used to characterise past plant richness. To improve the interpretation of sedimentary pollen richness, it is essential to understand the relationship between pollen and plant richness in contemporary landscapes. This study presents a regional-scale comparison of pollen and plant richness from northern Europe and evaluates the importance of environmental variables on pollen and plant richness.
2. We use a pollen dataset of 511 lake-surface pollen samples ranging through temperate, boreal, and tundra biomes. To characterise plant diversity, we use a dataset formulated from the two largest plant atlases available in Europe. We compare pollen and plant richness estimates in different groups of taxa (wind-pollinated vs non-wind-pollinated, trees and shrubs vs herbs and grasses) and test their relationships with climate and landsca...